In recent years, inspection of food products has become increasingly important. Compliance with Hazards Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) and food safety requirements requires food manufacturers to have appropriate safeguards and quality control methods in place. Inspection of comestibles minimises the risk of product recalls, protects consumers from harm, and is essential in safeguarding brand reputations.
Typical pumped meat and poultry products include muscle meats, ground meat, sausage meat, and poultry trims, including breast fillets and thigh meat. All of these products may contain contaminants such as glass, metal, mineral, stone, calcified bone, steel shot such as buck shot, needles and high density plastic.
Non-destructive inspection means, such as x-ray inspection systems, enable the inspection of pumped products with contaminants rejected prior to packaging or processing. This inspection leads to fewer wasted packaging materials, creates less rework of product and greatly reduces product loss caused by the removal of contaminants after packaging. By removing contaminants earlier in the process, it decreases the potential for expensive downtime events caused by contaminants that may damage downstream equipment.
Typically in such inspection devices, pumped food products are conveyed by means of a fixed pipe into an inspection chamber where, for example, x-ray attenuation images of the pumped food products are generated. Such fixed pipes typically contain an access port exteriorly to the inspection chamber to enable the cleaning of, and/or the removal of debris or blockages in, the fixed pipes in the system. In the current state of the art, the system must be shut down and the fixed pipes cleaned via the access port. This process is both inefficient and protracted in order to ensure the requisite level of cleanliness and hygiene required of food processing apparatus is achieved. The known solution is therefore limited in terms of its efficiency and usability.